During an appearance on Fox News Channel, Gov. Kristi Noem (R-SD) discussed the threat posed by TikTok and Chinese land ownership.
Noem said China’s objective was to “destroy” the United States, noting their presence not only in Big Tech but in land ownership around the country, as well.
Comments as follows:
NOEM: Well, first of all, Sean, that tweet and that TikTok message that was left at the senator’s voicemail is exactly the kind of actions you can expect when TikTok is involved. So, that is owned by the Chinese communist party. Their number one desire is to destroy America. So that is why we should be alarmed at the amount of influence that they have in this country.
They unleashed a pandemic and a virus on the world at the exact same time they released TikTok to make it proliferate and go out there and influence our youth and people to make them think that threats like that are funny. So that is absolutely insanity that those kinds of things were happening and that TikTok was doing that, but that’s what we can expect from China.
This marks my 30th year that I have been working on policy, egg policy. I’m a lifelong farmer and rancher. I’ve watched China come in and buy up our fertilizer companies, they bought up our crop care companies like our chemical companies. They bought our — stole our genetics, they’ve bought up our processing facilities, now they’re coming after our land.
And when they do that, Sean, they will control our food supply. And the country that can’t feed ourselves, we are no longer in control of our destiny. So if we think a pandemic was scary, imagine what happens when they control our food.
We’re only three meals away from a crisis in this country. People will break down and panic if they can’t put food on the table and there’s nothing at the grocery store for their families.
So wake up, America. China’s not just doing one thing, they’re doing different things, and they’re spying on our military installations, building up their military, manipulating their currency, stealing our intellectual property. We had spies in South Dakota this summer. They were spies that came into our state, that wanted to tour our facilities and steal our genetics and acted like they were good actors and just days later the State Department called us and said, did you meet with these people because they were spies and they were there to steal all of your information and your company’s private information.
And if you did meet with them, then we need to debrief you and thankfully we had refused all their meetings. But that’s what they’re doing, and it’s from every angle, and they’re crossing the southern border on purpose because their government is sending them here to spy on us. So I’m — I’m alarmed that the American people haven’t woken up to this yet.
I mean, be a little inconvenienced and give up TikTok for God’s sake. I mean, they literally are using it to change our minds and to manipulate our thoughts and our ideals and our values. And our country is too important for that.
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor